


What Fresh Lies

by cordeliadelayne



Category: Primeval
Genre: F/M, Faked Death, Getting Together, all works out in the end, references canon character deaths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-28
Updated: 2016-08-28
Packaged: 2018-08-11 10:32:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7887829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cordeliadelayne/pseuds/cordeliadelayne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jenny thinks she must be seeing things, Nick Cutter died and that part of her life was no more. But Jenny should know better than most that nothing in this world is ever as it seems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Fresh Lies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [reggietate](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=reggietate).



> Written as a Christmas present for the lovely reggietate who gave the prompt “after she's left the ARC Jenny discovers that Nick didn't die in 3.03.” 
> 
> Originally posted to Livejournal in 2013.

She read about it on a Tuesday. It wasn't a long obituary, certainly not detailed, but she did have to re-read it twice before the words actually started to make sense. Sarah was gone. Another victim of the ARC. Somehow it probably all tied back to Helen bloody Cutter, though Jenny had been deliberately avoiding any anomaly-related gossip so she had no details, only educated guesses.

It was Thursday before she picked up the phone and rang Lester. She wasn't entirely sure why she waited that long, but it had taken much more of her courage than she had expected. Lester's voice had made her almost ache and silent tears streamed down her face as he filled her in. She thanked him and promised to make the service.

The service was on a Saturday. The official story was some cock and bull about a car accident whilst researching in Egypt. Apparently that had been to explain the wounds, if anyone had wanted to look closer. Jenny never asked if anyone did. She stayed near the back, dressed in a sombre black that somehow felt wrong. She'd always thought of Sarah as bright and colourful, a breath of fresh air. And now she was gone. Just like Cutter. And Stephen. Just like Abby and Connor and Danny.

She still couldn't believe it. And now more than ever she wanted nothing to do with the ARC. She slipped out before Lester could get away from talking to Sarah's parents.

* * * * *

It was a Friday when she thought that her life was back on an even keel. She had a job that she didn't hate. A boyfriend that she thought she might be able to love. Friends who didn't know anything about dinosaurs. Free time that didn't involve being interrupted and ending up in a muddy field, running for her life. She was safe and settled.

It was a Wednesday when everything changed.

* * * * *

She'd been trying to avoid meeting her mother for lunch for ages but finally had run out of excuses. It wasn't as bad as she'd feared it would be – subtle hints about marriage and not so subtle hints about grandchildren – reports on what her cousins were doing (getting married, having children, getting divorced) and a long report on her father's ill health, most of which was only in her mother's mind.

Her guard had been down though and she felt relaxed in a way that made his appearance all the more startling. For, as she was walking back to her office, she saw Nick Cutter watching her from the other side of the road.

She turned away at once, certain that it was a mirage brought on by too much mother and too much wine. But when she turned back he was still there. Even though she was certain now that she was hallucinating she tried to cross the road, fighting against the tide of traffic. The man who looked so much like Nick Cutter that she couldn't, couldn’t believe it was him, looked startled as he realised what she was trying to do, and ran off in a loping manner that she knew far too well for comfort.

She finally managed to get across the road but her prey was nowhere in sight. And by the evening she had convinced herself that she had imagined the whole thing.

* * * * * *

Jenny had had long practice of lying to herself. She had done so where her feelings for her fiancé were concerned. She did where her feelings for her parents were concerned. She did it where her feelings for Nick Cutter were concerned. But the more she lied to herself, the more her dreams disturbed her sleep. And always that name, Claudia Brown, tucked away inside herself.

After two nights of interrupted sleep, Jenny decided that she needed to do something. She went back to the spot where she had last seen the phantom Cutter that absolutely could not have been him. She wasn't sure exactly what she was looking for, evidence that he had been there she supposed. Or evidence that he hadn't. Maybe a giant Cutter shaped shadow seared into a wall.

She spun on the spot, waiting for something, some inspiration, to strike. And that's when she saw him again. She slowed down, aware that her behaviour was attracting stares, and looked into the shop window next to her. He was clearly reflected in it, sitting at a table outside an Italian restaurant across the street, a cup of something in front of him.

Jenny ran across the road, barely noticing the traffic around her. Cutter, or at least what was passing for him these days, saw her and started to run, with a panicked look on his face that Jenny had never seen before. She couldn't understand why this was happening – what if she was seeing things and this wasn't Cutter at all? Could she really be chasing a complete stranger down the street?

That thought made her pause and she stopped her pursuit. She leaned forward on her knees, panting heavily – it was amazing how quickly you could get out of the habit of running for your life every other day.

She supposed she should ring Lester and see if he had any idea what was going on. What could she do though, if he didn’t tell, or worse if he had no idea and assumed she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown? (An idea that was starting to seem all the more likely).

She stood up and tried to decide between crying or shouting out in frustration. And how was it that even after all this time Nick Cutter could have that affect on her?

Realising that she was now the object of some scrutiny she started to walk quickly along the road, not really caring where she went, just knowing that she had to get away. She turned a corner, passed a newsagents and a hairdressers and then found a hand grabbing her arm and pulling her into the doorway between a clothes shop and a jeweller's.

Her old ARC self-defence training kicked in immediately and she started to release herself from her assailants' grip, but her whispered name drew her up short.

“Jenny, stop.”

“It really is you?” Jenny asked. As Cutter nodded she started hitting his chest with her fists. “You bloody bastard.”

Cutter looked shocked and it took him a moment before he started to defend himself from her blows.

“All right, lass, that's enough.”

As he took Jenny's hands in his he realised that tears were now streaming down Jenny’s face.

“How? _Why?_ ” She pulled away from Cutter. “Are you – you? This isn't some other time line you again is it?”

“No,” Cutter said. “I'm me. Look, I've got a flat, near here. Why don't we go there, have a cup of tea, and I'll explain.”

Jenny hesitated but ultimately she knew she would give in. Her curiosity demanded it if nothing else.

“All right.”

* * * * *

Jenny felt much calmer sat at Cutter's kitchen table with her fingers wrapped around a mug of hot tea. He seemed more real too, as he pottered about, making sure that she was comfortable and seeming perfectly at home in the small flat, littered as ever with books and papers and the odd dinosaur bone. It even smelt like Cutter, which was an association she wasn't sure she wanted to examine too closely.

“Cutter. _Nick._ Sit down.”

Cutter rubbed at his neck self-consciously and did as instructed. He took a sip of his own drink and then stared across at Jenny.

“It's good to see you.”

“You died,” Jenny said, getting straight to the point.

Cutter hesitated for a moment. “It was a necessary subterfuge.”

“So Lester was in on it too?” Jenny asked. She couldn't have said whether she was more outraged by that betrayal or Cutter's.

“Yes. Wait - “ he said, reaching out for Jenny as she started to stand up, “please, you said you’d listen. Let me explain.”

Jenny sat back down. “You have five minutes.”

Cutter nodded. “I – I'd been thinking about it, a lot. Ever since Stephen....There's just so much that has changed. But I knew I couldn't do anything with Helen still out there, she was my responsibility.” Jenny tried to interject at this point but Cutter waved her silent. “I felt she was my responsibility, and that's that. The things that woman has done, the lives she's ruined...She wasn't the woman I fell in love with, that's for sure.”

Cutter took a deep breath and Jenny found herself reaching out her hand and placing it on top of his on the table.

“She did shoot me, and I did nearly die. You weren't looking or you would have seen Lester leaning down and me telling him that I needed to be dead. I was taken to the hospital instead of the morgue, and Lester got on with faking the papers for my death. I think he told Lorraine, but no one else. We couldn’t risk it. The plan was for me to deal with Helen once and for all, whatever it took.”

“You didn't...” Jenny started to ask, and then stopped, certain that she didn't actually want to finish the question.

“I didn't kill her. Danny's already sorted that.”

“You've seen him? He's alive?”

“He will be,” Cutter said.

“You've been to the future.” Jenny was shocked, at first, but then it all made a certain sort of sense. “Safer for you there, than here, where people really know you.”

“I thought so. Helen had talked about the things that the ARC would do, the chaos we'd create and I'd wanted to see for myself. It took a while. Reconstructing the matrix took a long time, but I managed it in the end.” He squeezed Jenny's hand. “They'll all be back.”

“But you came back. Why? Why have you been watching me?”

Cutter tried to move his hand away from Jenny's, but she wouldn't let it go.

“You get married.”

Jenny shook her head in disbelief. “And you thought you'd break up another one of my relationships?”

Cutter had the grace to look embarrassed. “I – that's not – not what...”

Jenny just raised an eyebrow.

“I realised...when I was looking at the thing the ARC had become, I realised that I had spent all my life looking at the future and the past, but not paying any attention to the present. Not paying attention to what was right in front of me.”

Jenny didn't know what to think. He'd lied to her. And she was happy with her new life. She told herself she was happy.

“Please,” Cutter said. “I – I 've been wanting to bump into you for a while, but I didn’t know how you’d take it. If you’d want me.” He sat back in his chair. “I'm not very good at this.”

Jenny laughed. “Really? I hadn't noticed.”

Cutter smiled. “I'd like to try. To be better, with you. We could be good together, Jenny, I know it. I'd like the chance.”

“And the ARC? What about them?”

“They'll be fine. I think it's time for me to make a brand new start. And I want you to be there when I do.”

It was a lot to take in. A lot of planning would be needed. And she'd break some hearts along the way. But being with Cutter had felt right from the moment they'd met. Even when he'd annoyed her and called her by a different name something about him had called to her. The man was infuriating, but he was also quite possibly the love of her life.

“Is this where I tell you I can't promise you forever, and you tell me you’ll settle for right now?” she joked.

“There’s no such thing as settling where you're concerned,” Cutter said. He looked at her with so much genuine affection that the answer seemed inevitable.

“I'd love to make a new life with you,” she said.

And that was that. A brand new start. It wouldn't be easy, Cutter was completely incapable of that. But it would be rewarding and worth every moment of hardship that life was bound to throw at them. After all, if they could survive rips in time and insane ex-wives, they could survive anything.


End file.
